This invention relates to telephone wagering and more particularly to a system for preventing false indications of wagering location.
Las Vegas and other locations within the state of Nevada have long been known for providing a sports bet facility in which wagers have been placed from around the country utilizing either wireline or wireless telephones. While an individual can go to Nevada and while physically in the sports bet place a wager, much of the business for the sports bet of each of the casinos comes from telephone wagering.
Recently the Nevada Gaming Commission has required authorization for telephone wagering by insisting that the location of the wagering party and thus the wager be within the state of Nevada. Originally it was thought that by utilizing the caller ID function of the phone that it could be understood that a call was coming from within the state of Nevada. However it was soon found that by so called call-forwarding a person, for instance, in New York City could call forward his call through a local telephone within the state of Nevada, with the caller ID indicating the in-state wire line telephone.
Telephone wagering has become increasing difficult to police due to the existence of wireless phones. Wireless phones can make calls from anywhere to the sports bet, with the result being that a wager can placed from outside the state of Nevada quite easily.
After the Nevada Gaming Commission issued a requirement for a secure system to ascertain that all telephone bets were placed within the state of Nevada, various solutions were proposed involving a complicated infrastructure and phone call tracing, with one of the solutions being qualified by the Nevada Gaming Commission. However, over the period of a year in which the system has been approved it has been consistently spoofed so that the wager appears to have been placed within the state of Nevada when it is not.
The above-mentioned system was thought to be secure because of the wire line nature of the transmission of the transmission of the call and because it was thought that it could be ascertained if the telephone making the call was not within the state.
The situation is of course more difficult with wireless calls due to the fact that wireless phones are not at a pre-determined or given location. Thus the whereabouts of a wireless caller cannot be easily ascertained. While it was thought that determining the cell site which picked up the wireless call might in fact be an indication of where the wireless caller was, on the borders of Nevada it is possible to place calls from outside of Nevada and still pick up a cell site within the state of Nevada. Moreover, relay stations equivalent to the call-forwarding caller ID spoofing mentioned above, apply equally well to a wireless call in which a wireless call is placed and forwarded through a landline phone within the state of Nevada.
In order to provide a spoof proof system for ascertaining that a wagerer is within a given jurisdiction, in the subject invention a wireless phone is provided with a GPS receiver, the output of which is the latitude and longitude of the wireless phone. This information is wirelessly transmitted to the sports bet along with an indication, in one embodiment, of the time since last fix. In these phones the location is memorized for the times when the satellites are not in view. Indicating a time since last fix gives the gambling authority the opportunity to ascertain that an individual is within the boundaries of the gaming authority if the fix is for instance less than ten minutes old. This prevents the problem of someone taking the phone physically to Nevada and then removing it to a more convenient location, with the Nevada location having been memorized by the phone.
In one embodiment, the location is wirelessly transmitted through the utilization of DTMF or touch-tones which are transmitted over the voice channel, the same channel that is utilized to place the wager. These signals are decoded by a DTMF decoder at the sports bet and the location of the phone is detected along with the time since last fix. This location is compared with all of the known locations within the jurisdiction and if within the jurisdiction, then the wager is allowed to proceed. Moreover, and for more security if the present location is identical to a past location, authorization is withheld. This is effective because GPS location now has pinpoint accuracy and moving by as little as a foot causes a different latitude and longitude to be transmitted. If latitude and longitude is transmitted in hundredths of minutes, then such a small change can be detected, whereas if the latitude and longitude is merely memorized and the phone is removed, the memorized position will be transmitted and will be the same as a previously reported position.
Additional security is obtained by transmitting the phone""s mobile identification number (MIN) to the sports bet.
While the subject invention is described in connection with the Nevada Gaming Commission and its rules, the application to wagering applies regardless of the jurisdiction.
What is therefore supplied is a GPS-based system in which GPS location of the phone making the wager is transmitted to the entity taking the wager, the entity taking wager then ascertaining whether or not the wager has been placed within its geographic boundaries by comparing the GPS-determined location of the phone to all known locations within the geographic boundaries of the wagering authority. In one embodiment, this is accomplished through a simple bounding algorithm in which the boundaries of the wagering authority are known and in which all the locations within that boundary are reported as valid.
In summary, a wireless phone is provided with a GPS receiver and a system which is utilized to report the local position of the wireless phone either prior or during to the time of a telephone placed wager, in which the geographic coordinates of the phone are transmitted to the sports bet for verification that the wager is being placed within the geographic limits of the wagering authority. In one embodiment spoofing of the system is prevented by having the wireless phone report the time since last fix such that an individual within the wagering authority""s jurisdiction cannot remove himself from the jurisdiction with the location having been remembered, with the wager taking entity processing as valid only those geographic coordinates having a time since last fix of, for instance, ten minutes. Anything over this pre-determined limit is determined to be an invalid wager. So accurate is GPS that additional anti-spoofing is provided at the wager taking entity in which authorization is withheld if the location reported is identical to a previously reported location. Further anti-spoofing is provided by the phone transmitting its mobile identification number, with authorization for the wager occurring only for a pre-authorized mobile identification number.